sting
by lady lutka
Summary: they are regretful lovers — harsh where they should be gentle, quiet when they yearn to scream at the injustice of the world and how it has painted them. —jellal&erza (lemon) experimental fic


_I'm sorry if this is subpar compared to the usual. It's really just an experimental fic. It's also my first jerza piece, bc apparently I'm a Gruvia and Nalu ho.  
_ On another note, I recently won an award for a short piece I did for English Lit studies which came straight from the **ultraviolence** archives. Hopefully, the examiners are as kind as the judges lmao.

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alina barez x galimatias / **maybe**

rendezvous at two / **love me right**

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 _lies on your lips but there's love in your eyes_  
 _maybe_ _i'll forget you some other time_

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 _THEY ARE SOMETHING ROTTEN AND VULGAR, REMARKS BARKED IN EMPTY STREETS AND HISSED BENEATH A STRANGER'S SHEETS._

"There is something wrong here," he will say, distracted by her brilliance but too far gone in his own sin to appreciate it. Reverence was something that belonged to the old _him_ , the Jellal that wore sneers like the armour she would slip over her skin.

She won't reply because words are hard to find while your lips are pressed against the chest of the man you swore to forever hate, but not to forever love. She says with her tongue what her lips won't, despite the strength it takes and the harshness of his taste —

the sting of his hips.

She arches into his touch with a low keen, something like _love_ threatening to burst through all her fickle walls. He pushes her against them, marks the flesh of her shoulder with a warning nip. She lets him soothe it with a kiss but pulls away when his hands come to hold her hips in place.

"Get off," she spits, hands closing around his corded biceps. He lets her pull them to the exotic carpet, a colour much like her namesake. It lacks the vibrancy of her.

"So, this is how we're doing it?" he teases, his remark spoken into the valley between her breasts as they sway, peach-tipped pendulums counting down the seconds they have left. He fills that void with his own breath as he trails open-mouthed kisses down her ribs. He can feel where the bones have melded themselves together, each time stronger than the last. He counts those ridges with his lips, unsurprised that he runs out of breath before he reaches the next set.

She kneads his scalp, her harshness thawing in the wake of his intimacy. What's left is soft, bittersweet almost. Perhaps it's fitting that she tastes like all his past regrets. A gasp leaves her lips, and she rocks into him and all the promises of his touch. They take off his pants together, and she can't help the hum of seeing what she does to him – how she drives him insane with need. Her thong is removed in appreciation of what throbs against her navel, planting an inferno beneath her skin with each greedy thrust.

Her name is a groan as she teases him with her bare skin, inching the strap of her thin bra down inch by agonising inch. His patience thins all too quickly, and he wars with the desire to rip it off her and take her right there, on the carpet that seems to blend with the hair entangled in his fingers. She doesn't wince, kisses his palm instead with her eyes open wide. His remain fixed on her as their hips sway together, two magnets always coming back together.

"You know I've missed you," he whispers, all his malice gone and replaced with something only for her eyes to see.

"I wished you wouldn't," she says back, and closes his lids with her lips. It's not a lie. They could be so much more, _he_ could be so much more than what she will irrevocably curse him to be.

He notices this, quietens those destructive thoughts with his lips. They lead her up into his arms, where he carries her further into the hotel suite reserved under his fake name. It feels empty, the luxury a stark reminder of the home they can never have, not with the reaching hands his past and the blinding brilliance of her future. He presses her into one starkly white wall, imagines it the colour of caffé crema or toffee. Would they cover it in photos of them, and the family he wrongly wished they would have? He kisses her with the force of all the things he could sever say aloud, hands pressing into all her sweet spots and leaving her gasping for the breath he steals.

The bed jostles when he finally deposits her at the foot of it, resting his knees on the plush carpet at her feet. Her hips move of their own accord, legs curling over his broad shoulders and kneading the knots in his lower back. He trails his lips from her knee to the inside of her thigh, nose brushing the infinity between her legs. _Those_ lips welcome him easily, parting like the sea as he coats his middle finger in her essence. She breathes his name like a prayer, fingers entangled in his hair.

"It's been so long," he whispers against her, and her thighs tremble beneath his breath.

He kisses her core, tongue caressing her outer lips and trailing a path to her engorged clit. Her back arches into the mattress, as if the fluttering of her heart is urging her to take flight. His arm comes across her navel to settle her, grounding her to the mattress while his other squeezes the roundness of one hip. She rocks into his touch greedily, gasping when he wraps his lips around her mound and massages it with his tongue. The sounds coming from her are not her own, they are solely his.

Cherishing her is easy; it comes naturally to him. It's forgetting her that is hard. She rules the confines of his mind, cursing him to never once forget to take her into consideration when determining all those harsh decisions forced upon him. To take a life is to see her light dim just that little bit.

"Jellal," she calls, and pushes up slightly on her elbows to meet his gaze. "Come back to me."

Her voice soothes those thoughts, forces them to fall silent. He teases her bud with his teeth, relishes in the hiss that escapes her lips. The air pulses along with the twitching of her thighs, the scent of jasmine and lust almost toxic. She can feel all the spots where his mark has branded her – the inside of both thighs, the spotted flesh of her stomach below her navel, the sloping curves of her hips. The open window creates a path for the summer draught and it settles around them, nurturing where they are calloused. She ignores how his hands catch over her scars from their hard years, and she avoids peering too closely at the jagged lashes ripping into his back from years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the government she is sworn to protect.

They are regretful lovers — harsh where they should be gentle, quiet when they yearn to yell and scream at the injustice of the world and how it has painted them.

His fingers tease one nipple, following the peak in winding circles around her areola. She shudders, muscles fluttering around his fingers as they massage her walls. The loss of him as he eases his fingers from her pulls a needy whine from her lips, and he settles them with a searing kiss. The bed dips as he covers her with his own flesh, both hands bracing his weight on either side of her head. His fringe falls forward as he dips his head to her neck, and she pushes it back with her fingers. Quivering thighs opening wider, he settles more fully against her warmth, his bare length trailing a path of fire across the throbbing slit of her entrance. His lips are upon hers and engulfing her, seeking an answer she isn't sure she can give. To want him is sinful, to deny herself an absolute travesty.

Her hips make the decision for her, and they welcome him warmly as he rocks into her. She stretches to accommodate him after so long apart, after so many nights of imagining the long shadows of her bedroom were him. They lacked the sting of him.

"Erza," he moans into her neck, breath a hiss. Her lips ease the furrow of his brow, hips circling his own.

To be together like this is to board a vessel and lead it far out to sea, where dusk bleeds into the pulsing waters. They are infinite here, the horizon of each impending dawn no longer confining them. She kisses him fondly, warmth buzzing through her body as they are joined once again, after so many nights apart. The dawn and its consequences cannot harm them here.

He rocks into her, hips colliding with her own hard enough to jolt the mattress. Her breasts tremble with the motion, pebbled nipples chafing against the planes of his chest with every thrust that brings them closer. She stretches her thighs further apart, until they burn pleasantly. He delves in deeper, harder, faster, until she is a mess of moans.

The end is nowhere near for them.

He flips them over, so she is perched on his cock with all her weight. His name is a drawn-out moan as she rocks her hips, welcoming the shift in power. He knows her too well, but it doesn't frighten her anymore, like it once did. She looks down to find him watching her keenly, eyes darkened and hungry. Kissing him feeds that beast, and soon his hands find her hips so he can lift her higher. She grips his shoulders to keep herself steady as she impales herself on him, each thrust more electric than the last. That familiar band tightens in her belly, clit still humming from his earlier administrations. His hand comes between them to swirl circles around it, creeping closer with each circuit. Her grip on him slips when he flicks it, and his cock plunges deep within her.

She barely manages to choke his name with the onslaught of pleasure overwhelming her, mind void of anything other than him. He flips them again and takes her from behind, jackhammering into her in search of his own release. Merciless are his thrusts, her electrified clit quivering with each brush of his cock. She moans into the pillows, nails clawing at the sheets as she feels herself begin to unravel again. Her walls haven't stopped fluttering around him, though now they clench, draw him in further. His lips find her shoulder, breath ghosting over the back of her neck and he watches her tease her own nipples. He groans at the sight, and angles himself to where he hits that part of her that drives her wild with wanton desire, the part of her that turns his name into a keen from her lips. It does just that, and she rolls her nipples eagerly, so close to careening off that familiar high.

Her name slips from his lips as he finds his release, and it binds them with an oath as she shudders in his arms. "I'm sorry," he whispers, hold tightening around her. They entwine beneath the sheets, lust sizzling into something softer.

"It's okay," she comforts emptily, like all the times before.

"Why must we keep doing this to ourselves?" he ponders into her shoulder, lips brushing the dampened skin. She can't help her shiver or the silence. What answer could she possibly give?

"You need rest," she says instead, and gently massages his scalp.

"I need to return," he protests, but like her own words that promise is empty. Instead he pulls her closer, until she can no longer distinguish where they meet or end. Come dawn he will be gone. She can already hear the soft clicking of the door shutting, his heavy footsteps pacing the hallway before he works up the nerve to leave.

She memories the details of the room in a bid to stay awake — the carpet, the wall panelling, their pooled clothes littering the ground in a trail to the bed, the skewed bedside lamp. A bouquet of roses graces the small dining table, peonies in the bathroom. They almost glow in the candlelight, ever living reminders of the separation between them. She burrows into him, hiding her face in his neck.

Despite all her attempts, sleep finds her. Sunlight pools through the gaps in the drawn drapes, shines a beam on the half-empty bed. She isn't surprised to find the sheets cold. Every trace of him is gone and if it weren't for the ache between her thighs and the stiffness in her limbs, she might believe it all to be a dream. She convinces herself that they are something rotten and vulgar—

it eases the sting of him.

They are easy to forget this way. Perhaps it's fitting that he tastes like each and every one of her regrets; breathing lust and bleeding guilt. She forces herself to stand, drags herself to the bathroom to wash away every trace of their sin. Skin red-raw, she equips into her armour and welcomes its embrace. She doesn't look back at the bed, doesn't pause to listen to the ballads the sheets still sing. Ignorance is a blessed thing.

"Madam!" someone calls, and she meets the gaze of the maid at the end of the corridor.

"Is everything alright?" she asks, keen gaze scanning the hall.

"Someone asked that I give you this letter. I think they said their name was Jellal?"

Her breath hitches, unsure of the envelope despite how she longs to take it. What would it say? Would he ever ask her to stay away? Her hand takes it either way, and she tears it open right there, in the middle of the hall outside their door. His writing is instantly distinguishable, penmanship impeccably neat after years in the Council.

 _I'm not sorry anymore.  
-J._

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 _what do i do  
_ _when there's too much of me, too little of you?_

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End file.
